


Shining Plain

by TeaCub90



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (and quite possibly a nap), Domestic, Endeavour Morse Needs a Hug, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Max DeBryn is Unapologetically Lovely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29056044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaCub90/pseuds/TeaCub90
Summary: Morse doesn’t come back until long after Christmas is over, sloping up Max’s drive just after New Year and clutching his coat around himself, looking impossibly thinner and paler than ever, his usually auburn hair darkened to browner shades.
Relationships: Max DeBryn & Endeavour Morse
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Shining Plain

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for being so rubbish at replying to comments lately, y'all. I will try to catch up; thankyou so much for all the support. I've had this in the pipeline for a few weeks and wanted to get it published before January was over. This is coming from a very emotionally-wrought, tearful me at 4 in the morning (lockdown has completely messed up my sleeping pattern) so all mistakes are mine. _Endeavour_ , however, is not.

* * *

Morse doesn’t come back until long after Christmas is over, sloping up Max’s drive just after New Year and clutching his coat around himself, looking impossibly thinner and paler than ever, his usually auburn hair darkened to browner shades. His face, his eyes, appear lined, slanted; he doesn’t even seem all that surprised when Max wrenches the door open to greet him before he’s even had a chance to knock.

‘I saw you coming,’ he explains needlessly, taking one look at Morse’s exhausted-looking sway on the doorstep; he’s got some tinsel in his hand today, the first bits of decoration he was beginning to take down now that his family have gone. Oh well, he supposes, he might always attempt to strangle someone with it, if Morse was even in the mood for seeking something sinister; judging by his vacant look and his hunched shoulders, he doesn’t even seem to have noticed - just nods vaguely and hovers on the doorstep like Max’s very own proverbial vampire. ‘Well, don’t stand on ceremony out here in the cold, come in.’

‘Thanks,’ Morse mutters, his voice something of a hoarse shock and does as he’s bid, slipping inside, letting Max shut the door behind him and shuffling into the kitchen, hovering in the corner like a ghost; a tardy Charles Dickens character who completely missed the festivities and is now lingering at the turn of the year, unsure of what precisely to do with himself.

‘May I take your coat?’ he asks, pointedly; it’s as if all the confidence that Morse gained in his cottage before Christmas has shrunken, gone away again and Morse stares at him, uncomprehending, before he understands.

‘Oh,’ he blinks, tugs at himself, takes the coat off, eyes wandering around the place, taking in the half-echo of celebrations now long-gone, tinsel half-hanging. It’s the first week of the New Year and all the Christmas decorations need boxing up; the tree taking out back.

‘Twelfth night,’ he says it aloud, like a realisation, as Max hangs his coat up in the hallway next to his own; Max is moved to wonder, on hearing the tell-tale croak in his throat, when the fellow last slept.

‘Indeed,’ Max rejoins; coming back through, ‘I’m not particularly superstitious, but in this job, one can’t be too careful.’ He smiles at Morse and uses the opportunity to take him in properly; noting the lack of gloves and the pressing together of hands, the scarf around his neck. ‘Have a seat. Would you like a drink? I was about to stop for lunch.’ This is a complete lie; he’s only been working at de-cluttering the house for about twenty minutes; the combined beauty of doing his duty right up to Christmas Eve and the benefit of a slow first week back – a decent sign that there’s no murderers stalking about for the foreseeable – is that he’s been rewarded with a day off, during which he enjoyed a long, leisurely lie-in, breakfast in bed and then set to work at a relaxed pace to get the cottage back to its norm for the next twelvemonth.

The promise of ‘Do not harm’ waits for no medic, however, and with Morse, it tends to extend to ‘leave no foolish detective-sergeant unfed’ and so with that in mind, Max bustles about; puts the kettle on and gets out the biscuits, a much-coveted chocolate set that his darling niece Margaret gifted him, recognising his fondness for such treats. He’s fully aware of Morse’s silence; the detective-sergeant’s visits, and occasional sleepovers, in the run-up to Christmas became filled with his own special brand of confidence; casual questions asked about Max’s plans for the holiday, his garden and the occasional dip into the past. Now though, there’s a very telling pause between them; as though those few days of progress have disappeared along with the previous year, leaving this version of Morse silent and still, as though he’s not sure what he’s doing here.

Max decides to start, and with the most obvious question: ‘What did you do for Christmas, in the end?’ he asks, pouring tea and bringing it to the table. Morse shifts from where he’s resting his head on one hand, looking close to falling asleep.

‘My sister – Joyce,’ he corrects himself. ‘I went to see her. Up north. I haven’t – I’ve barely seen her, over the last few years. I’ve been…quite poor, really, at keeping in contact. I wanted to change that.’ He sounds as though he’s not even talking to Max; rather chastising himself, as though he’s in a confessional box.

‘A pleasant stay, I hope?’ Max puts the tea close to his hand; Morse picks it up carefully, cups it in both hands, the steam stroking his face as he takes a large gulp. Max sips his own tea, sedate, watches the outlines of Morse’s face; the crow’s feet at the corners of his tired eyes in sharp comparison to the smoother, gentler features of their early acquaintance; that once-bright, open gaze now just that little bit narrowed against the state of the world – and today, almost glazed over with exhaustion – his clever mouth, held in a far more sombre line these days. 

‘She has someone, now,’ he tells Max, as though he can’t quite believe it; there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth that could be a smile, could be something else altogether. Disbelief, perhaps. Wistfulness, maybe.

‘I see,’ Max parses that, taps his mug. ‘And she’s happy?’ He knows nothing about Morse’s sister, beyond her name and a very vague estimate of her age and location but it sounds like a warm, friendly relationship, which is a relief; the prospect of Morse alone in the world, rudderless with nowhere to go – admittedly one of Max’s reasonings for keeping his door open to the detective – is a highly unpleasant thought.

‘She says so. Seems to be.’ Morse crooks his eyebrow, his head, contemplative. ‘I’m not sure if I’m the judge. I wondered if I was meant to do all the things that I – that brothers are supposed to do. Threaten him, maybe, interrogate him, tell him not to mess her around, but I just – I didn’t see the point. They’ve already been together for…’ He shakes his head, looking more and more dazed by the second. ‘Well. A while. And Gw – her mother. Well. She’s…’ He shakes his head, reaches for his mug. ‘Doesn’t matter. He’s a good man.’ He nods to himself, and Max wonders how much of it is self-reassurance for the thing itself, and how much of it may be soothing a wound born of perhaps neglect, most likely his own doing. ‘Yeah, he’s – he’s good. Don’t need all that…that overly-masculine bravado from me.’

It sounds a little bit like he’s saying something else altogether, something a little sadder and Max decides not to make haste with a response, at least not yet, not sure if it would even be wanted; instead, he watches over his tea-mug as Morse’s eyes – and perhaps his thoughts – wander around the room, always seeming a little emptier in January with the spaces left behind by the red and green sparkles, the tree half-naked, everything a little darker with the lights taken down.

‘Where’s it all going? Garden shed?’ he asks eventually, a very valiant stab at normality, even brevity and Max hides a faint smirk.

‘Attic,’ he says in the same vein. ‘The shed would make everything a tiny bit damp.’

Morse does smirk at that, just vaguely; he can’t seem to keep his hands still. ‘Suppose.’ Then, following a brief pause in which Max takes the rather valiant opportunity to nudge the biscuits slightly closer to his elbow in a shamefully heavy hint: ‘Would you like some help?’

And that’s how Max finds himself spending the afternoon wrapping up his Christmas decorations with Morse, packing them away side-by-side at the table, a round of cheese and pickle sandwiches at their elbows. Morse – having been threatened with the bargain of polishing off at least two biscuits and the entirety of his tea before he moved a muscle – is like a curious child, inspects the baubles – some shop-brought, others family heirlooms, a few made by Margaret in her childhood which sentiment absolutely forbids Max to toss – asks questions; taps at the shine shyly with the tips of his fingers, like a kitten discovering a new toy, mouth quirking at his own reflection like he’s a casual spectator to a sport. Max watches him out of the corner of his eye and wonders how much – or how little, perhaps – Morse has experienced of this particular season, over the years.

Ironically, the prospect of this particular detective’s help means progress is actually slower, although Morse is as careful with the ornaments as he is with registering evidence and truth be told, it’s quite nice to share a few anecdotes with him along the way; to have his careful hands holding down the flaps of the box for Max as he tapes it up for the umpteenth time, a ritual of several years standing by now marked by the faint presses and marks of the previous year’s tape. He’s then saved a job altogether when Morse heroically offers to drop the stuff back up into the attic for him. Max holds the ladder firmly on the upstairs landing, passes the boxes up to be put away, rather enjoying the domesticity of it, envying Morse his sprite and youthfulness; gives Morse a steady hand to help him down again and gets a faint smile in return. Morse’s hand, clasped in his, is cold.

Then comes the tricky bit: getting rid of the tree.

‘It’s going to be sharp,’ Max warns, giving Morse his spare pair of gardening gloves before pulling on his own; Morse nods, fastens the large gloves around his thin fingers - they swim in them, but it’s better than nothing, and at least his smooth hands will be warm, and protected. Funny really, Max considers distractedly – as he lifts the stones out of the tree-pot and they work together to lift the tree up and out – that people usually associate soft hands with a lack of work. His own bear the callouses of years of medicine and pathology, of stitching and fishing and gardening, but in reality it feels it’s an unfair calculation; Morse works harder than anyone he knows.

And despite the fiddly technicalities, Morse’s help _does_ , in fact, make this particular part of the process a damn sight easier than usual – even after some clumsy coordination, the odd mutter of, ‘No, no, to the left – your left, Morse,’ and complaints of not being able to see where they’re going. Laying it out on the garden patio for a rest, Morse chuffs, hands on hips, a little breathless as though chasing murderers is less complicated than this.

‘Where’s it going? Round the front?’

‘No,’ Max explains. ‘Hopefully this weekend I can get around to chopping it up and using it as firewood.’

‘Oh – well,’ Morse straightens up, something in his eyes suddenly, seemingly _hooked,_ ‘if you have an axe, I can do it for you now, if you like.’

*

Max doesn’t quite know how this has become his afternoon; watching Morse, sleeves drawn up in the lowlight, breaking the tree apart in his garden. Every swing is determined and focused, his face twisted with _something_ as it comes down, something lost in the brutal thuds and splintering thunks of sharp metal against wood, expelling gasps, almost _desperate_ breaths.

Max doesn’t comment; just takes the branches that litter his patio and puts them out on the fire pile in the garden, leaving Morse to target the body. He barely acknowledges Max’s presence at all during that time, save for drinking the water that Max silently hands him, the coffee he makes to try and keep him warm. It’s January and freezing, but Morse’s fringe sticks to his forehead with the exertion, the sleeves of his red jumper drawn up to reveal pale, freckled wrists and arms. Max would feel guilty – however, there was, after all, a quiet determination in Morse’s tone, a plea even, steamrolling over any protest he had and already deciding the matter for himself, in his own mind, speaking of a deeper, desperate need. To be useful, perhaps, or simply not be alone, Max can’t quite tell. Perhaps both, in the end.

Finally, Max’s patio is covered in splintered wood and bark, the clouds are rolling over, casting them in navy-grey shadows and Max quietly brushes up the remnants, takes the larger logs and lays them down by his fireplace in his lounge, as Morse, breathing hard, gulps down a fresh glass of water, holds the glass to his forehead.

‘Inside,’ Max instructs, before Morse gets it into his head to repaint the garden shed next; Morse swings the axe, once, leaves it in the stump left behind – Max blinks and says nothing – and staggers stiffly inside, wiping his forehead with his arm, exhausted but with a twist in his face of something close to satisfied.

‘Thankyou, old fellow.’ Max shuts the door behind him because what can you say to an unexpected houseguest (well, perhaps not so unexpected at this point, after all) coming in and assisting greatly with an afternoon of chores, making things simultaneously easier and more complicated all at once. Morse, worn out and suddenly without a purpose, looks staggered suddenly, uncertain again, unsure of precisely where to go and Max quickly guides him to the sofa to sit down. ‘That’s it. Feet up, I’ll fetch you a cup of tea. Maybe a bath,’ he comments, squinting at the dirt marks, the sweat, covering Morse’s face in a sheen, the bark in his hair. Morse takes another sip of water, waves a hand around in some vague protest that he doesn’t need it.

‘Bath it is, then,’ Max decides. He pours Morse a brandy to shake some of the staggering cold and stiffness out of his bones, winces at how fast he downs it like water.

It only occurs to Max, as he runs the bath upstairs – can’t begrudge the chap a bit of hot, cleansing water, even if he has chosen Max’s sanctuary to clearly expel some demons, Max’s cottage apparently part of the route in his head, part of his wonderings and wanderings, his comings and goings – to consider the memory of another bathtub not all that long ago. _All a bit coppery,_ the white streaked with red – and Morse, avoiding his gaze, something soft and sad in his own; thoughtful, as he considered the scene. Resigned.

He clears his throat; bustles off down the corridor to retrieve a towel, and some clean clothes; returns to the lounge only to find Morse with his head back, staring at the ceiling, worrying the empty brandy tumbler in his hands.

 _‘Awake, my St. John,’_ Max jests; takes the brandy out of his hands. ‘Up you go, old fellow; wash yourself off thoroughly. I don’t know what your plans are for this evening but you can’t go about them looking like a Home Office pathologist just took advantage of your good nature.’

‘You didn’t,’ Morse blinks but lets himself be pushed towards the stairs anyway. Max listens to the heavy tread upwards – the thuds of a giant, echoing and very, very tired – and as he hears the unmistakeable creak and soft thud of the bathroom door swinging shut, tries not to despise himself for the fact that he will probably go up and check within the hour if things go too, suspiciously quiet.

*

Later, as he puts a log from the trunk of the deceased Christmas tree into the flames, radio playing – anything to distract himself from invading Morse’s space like an overprotective parent – he hears a soft thud on the stairs and Morse appears, a shy slip of a vision, bundled up in Max’s dressing gown, his hair damp. He seems a little sheepish – as though unused to having anyone see him like this, this far off his guard when he uses his uniform, his entire attitude, as a stern shield, and Max smiles warmly at him.

‘Better?’ he asks, indicating that Morse take a seat; he does, with a sigh and looks drained – by what, precisely, Max can’t tell, but he hopes it’s at least healthy. ‘Anything you need?’

Morse shakes his head, stifles a yawn. ‘No. Thanks, Max,’ he offers, rather feeble – by the efforts of today and perhaps by something else; embarrassment, maybe, or a sudden awareness of self. Max nods, pokes at the fire until it’s healthy enough to warm the room and comes to sit down beside him. They both sit in the shared silence born of their profession, of standing by while the other one works, the flickering flames doing all the speaking for them and then Morse dips his head to rest on one hand.

‘Might see Thursday tomorrow,’ he murmurs casually, stifling a yawn, albeit badly.

‘Oh yes?’ Max asks, carefully. ‘How are things in that regard?’ Since Venice – since Morse’s brave, utterly foolhardy attempt to bring in those responsible for Mrs Bright’s death, a poor man’s Bonnie and Clyde – watching Morse and Thursday has been like watching an excruciatingly slow chess-match, or a jigsaw puzzle painstakingly being put back together. ‘Are you on friendly terms, at least?’

‘We’re getting there,’ Morse nods. ‘Sam is home from the army – he was on leave – and Mrs Thursday, well. She invited me to dinner.’ Every word is a building block – a stumbling block, perhaps – but it’s progress, nevertheless.

‘And what did the Inspector say?’

Morse shrugs, casually obstinate and deliberately secretive. ‘We’re getting there,’ he repeats, which both does and doesn’t answer the question. ‘I – I couldn’t,’ he swallows suddenly, scrubs his face down, seems to pull down his own usual eloquence with words as well. ‘I realised,’ he meets Max’s eyes then, ‘Well. Since…’ He’s staring at Max a bit too hard, suddenly, a bit _too_ intently, his hand worrying his ear like it usually does when he’s uncertain. ‘After… all that. The quarry,’ he fills in finally, almost apologetically and Max nods, the words not hurting as deeply as they might have done a year ago. Funny, he considers, the things that affect a man, except of course it’s not funny at all.

‘And before. I think – that’s when it all started,’ and it’s spilling out of Morse now, as though assured of Max’s reaction, ‘when things were starting to unravel. We thought it was fine and – and behind us and then I think we both realised – it actually wasn’t. And that…bled into us, I think. Right in.’

‘Into my heart an air that kills,’ Max murmurs, ‘from yon far country blows,’ and doesn’t need to say another word; Morse swallows, ducks his head, contemplates the fire. ‘He’s doing his best, Morse. He can’t change any of it. For that matter, neither can you.’

‘I know,’ Morse nods, still not looking at him but perhaps on his own past, his own faults – his own breakdown at a crime-scene. ‘I know.’ He shuts his eyes for a moment; breathes out – Max lays a hand on his back in a swift rub that seems to jog Morse a little and he opens his eyes; smiles a little. Reassured, Max carries on, rubs Morse’s back a moment and it’s nice; close, warm contact, a sweeping movement up and down the still spine of a man who nobody ever seems able to stay.

‘It’ll be alright,’ Max assures; Morse hums and leans towards him a little, head drooping, clearly exhausted by his admission but seemingly safe in this spot and Max gives him a gentle hug disguised as a soft squeeze before giving him his space to ease back against the cushions, to relax just a little.

‘I do understand, though,’ he murmurs, turning to stare into the flames. ‘It’s never easy, in the end, to leave it all behind. Not entirely.’ He smirks to himself, without any humour. ‘Time was, after all the…unpleasantness of that night, well. Perfectly natural to be affected by these things,’ he adjusts his glasses; remembers them cracked between his own bloodied hands, in the cold of the quarry, his head sore, Morse standing before him like a copper-headed angel of the morning with assurance and kindness, following the bullets and the cold, chilling fear. He takes his glasses off for a moment to rub his eyes, lets the fire become a blurred pile of sparks before him, _‘The happy highways where I went,_ indeed. Hm.’

He falls silent; contemplates that for a moment, the feeling of a line being crossed sometimes, with no way to go backwards, only forwards – even in the mortuary. He imagines that would amuse Morse no end; the place where the dead pass through, a constant in everybody’s lives, where Morse himself fell to the floor in a dead faint and where Max has worked so diligently, unaffected, for several years – silently managing and even slightly enjoying, to a degree, the art of being able to terrify a few police-officers along the way, particularly those who employed intimidation and brutality as part of their repertoire – becoming a place where he started jumping at his own shadow. Where every slam of a door, every squeak of a trolley, every footstep in the corridor caused him to start; made him grasp a knife or a scalpel in his hand all the tighter, in potential preparation, just for a moment, until his heart stopped thumping so hard and he sternly reminded himself to breathe.

Of course, not even the promise of a new year had been enough to soothe him – not when on the very first day there was a body of a young woman left out in the cold and the dark of the towpath; not when the prospect of a new start, for all of them, was quickly dismissed by a mutual coldness between two detectives that spread, and spread, leaving no room for anyone else; no memory of what they had endured that cold morning at the quarry, nobody even stopping to wonder how it shook Max’s bones, to hear another kind of hostility over his head at crime-scenes and closer to home, by those who seemed to so smoothly forget – as surely as fictional characters always, and so conveniently, seem to forget the past on a new episode of a television show – that which he _remembered_ ; that he himself had been bound and gagged in the middle of it all last time.

Small wonder he’d lost his temper, in the end, barking them both to a startled standstill beside a crime-scene, so tired of hearing them wasting precious time with their petty arguing when yet another girl lay dead at their feet.

He hums, turns with a thought to tell Morse all this – to start to explain, at least, to try and fill in a gap where the last year of work, and letting Morse grieve for all that’s been lost, has somehow left him unable to do so – only to realise the sheer silence of Morse beside him, the copper hair fanned out against the cushions, the evened out breathing.

He’s fallen asleep.

Well, then. Max chuckles to himself, utterly resigned – truly, he considers, he ought to have seen that coming – and stands carefully. Morse hums but doesn’t wake, looks like an untroubled sprite, smoother and calmer in sleep than he has been for days. Carefully, Max pulls the rug off the back of the sofa, and puts it over him, carefully brushes some of his fringe out of his eyes – growing out again lately, an absent-minded curl – pauses, in case he stirs. Morse doesn’t; simply breathes out softly and Max smiles, something in him oddly relieved as he switches off the main lights, choosing instead to leave the lamp on – a beacon and a reassurance for whenever Morse wakes up – and goes to find a half-decent book to spend his evening with. 

*

The next weekend, Morse sits in the early evening shade of Max’s garden, sipping hot chocolate with his own coat slung over his shoulders, watching Max load the last of the tree branches onto his bonfire, their faces heated by the merry crackling. His hair glows like the sparking embers – like the lightness that the sun casts over it in summer as he leans forward to staring into the flames, blue eyes seeming almost melted in the light; a glinting, fiery glow.

‘Anything to burn?’ Max puffs, leaning on the spade; it’s meant in jest but Morse seems to come out of himself at the question, smiles politely up at him; pauses, and looks thoughtful.

‘Not anymore,’ he replies finally, honest enough, something shadowed in his eyes – speaking, without words, of another fire, another evening, sat in his own home perhaps and watching the remnants of something burn to ash. He smiles at Max as he sits down beside him, passes his own mug of cocoa over to him quietly, performing his policeman’s duty of ensuring a safe, contained local fire to the hilt of perfection, accepts the shortbread that Max offers him with a polite murmur of thanks.

The phone might ring any moment and call away Morse, or Max, or both of them together – but just for now, they sit quietly, side-by-side, watching the flames merrily rising up into the sky, the smoke flitting far away above their heads.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Max quotes from Alexander Pope's 'Essay On Man' and of course, inevitably, A.E. Housman's 'Land of Lost Content.'


End file.
